


Prelude

by actizera (kitestringer)



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Crazy Beecher, Drug Use, Gen, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-24
Updated: 2004-12-24
Packaged: 2018-08-07 08:02:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7706902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestringer/pseuds/actizera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan wants Toby on his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Marinwood in the 2004 Oz Magi Holiday Fic and Art Exchange
> 
> Circa the S1 ep A Game of Checkers. Keyphrase: "Be my brother?"
> 
> Thanks to Maverick and Rustler for comments and suggestions.

“So how ‘bout it?”  
  
O’Reily’s voice rattles through Beecher’s skull—too loud, too much, too _intense,_ after the solitude of the Hole. His own voice, shouting at Schillinger a minute ago, had seemed _earsplitting_ to him, like something the whole universe could hear. Everything out here is magnified, painfully brilliant, as if the hacks at the guard station have cranked up the volume and contrast in Em City as a new and subtle form of punishment. He wants to cover his eyes and his ears against it.  
  
But he can’t, of course. People speak to him, and he’s expected to respond. It is what normal people do, after all. He gets that. He isn’t so far gone that he can’t remember that much. But...  
  
 _Wait!_ he wants to scream. _Just wait._  
  
 _I think I might need to go back._  
  
O’Reily, for his part, seems willing to wait for an answer. He stands quietly, everything about him a study in patience and calm acceptance—everything except his eyes, which watch Beecher carefully as he straightens the sheets and blankets on his bunk. Beecher senses his stare shifting from his hands to his face and back again, and he runs his palm back and forth along the length of the blanket, trying to seem oblivious. Trying to _be_ oblivious.  
  
If people are determined to keep talking to him, to keep trying to demand things of him, he wishes they would at least have the courtesy to make some goddamn _sense._ So far, starting with McManus walking into the Hole and handing him his clothes, no one’s been making _any_ sense. All around him, everyone’s motives are infuriatingly opaque. And now O’Reily’s claiming that he needs his help.  
  
Needs _his_ help?  
  
So...would that be with or without the lipstick and fishnets?  
  
O’Reily clears his throat gently and coughs a little. “You okay, man?”  
  
“Look,” Beecher begins, wanting to tell it like it is, to lay down the new law. Here’s how things are going to be with him from now on: _A,_ He’s nobody’s butt boy, not anymore. _B,_ He has no intention of being pushed around or manipulated by _anyone,_ just in case that’s what anyone has in _mind._ But he loses his train of thought when he turns and sees O’Reily standing there with his wiry arms hanging casually over the bed frame, the expression on his face that familiar cross between cringe and grin—the one that says, “Hey, I know I’m asking a lot, but whaddya say, bro?”  
  
“What do you _really_ want from me?” It’s something he probably should have been wondering all along, ever since O’Reily offered him that first joint out of the clear blue sky. “Do _you_ want to touch my dick?”  
  
Like most things, the question doesn’t seem to faze O’Reily in the slightest. “No, man. I just want you with me when this Muslim shit hits the fan. That’s all.”  
  
Beecher snorts. “That desperate, huh?”  
  
“Nah. Not desperate.” O’Reily squints at him. “I just gotta know who my friends are. After the way you took out Schillinger in the gym? Let’s just say I want you on my side.”  
  
 _Crazy or not?_ Beecher thinks. He can’t quite bring himself to say it; he’s still trying to work out the finer points of that question for himself.  
  
Suddenly exhausted, he sinks onto the lower bunk, lets himself keep sinking until he’s on his back, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. How can he be so tired, after all that time doing nothing but sitting on his ass in the Hole? But it feels like he’s run twenty miles to get from there to here, and the prospect of having to reintegrate himself into the Em CIty routine, of having to conform to its draconian schedule and watch his back every second of every day, is too weighty and horrible a concept to take standing up.  
  
And O’Reily...he’s getting close again, too close. The bunk shifts, the mattress dips, as he sits down next to him; with every intake of breath, Beecher can smell the kitchen grease that saturates his clothes. It’s a smell his brain has become conditioned to associate with certain things, and they’re all coming back to him now. O’Reily and drugs—his respite from hell.  
  
“Hey. I got something for you.”  
  
“I told you not to get so close to me,” Beecher says, without opening his eyes.  
  
O’Reily doesn’t back off this time. “This’ll be worth it. Trust me.”  
  
 _Like “old” times._ Beecher knows what he’ll see even before he opens his eyes and sees it: O’Reily, reclining next to him, leaning on one elbow, a small amount of white powder tapped out onto his clenched fist. He won’t tell Beecher what it is, and Beecher won’t ask. He never does.  
  
“I’m clean, O’Reily.” But he’s already propping himself up to face him. Really, who does he think he’s kidding?  
  
“Last thing I want is to get you strung out right now. Just think of this as a little pick-me-up.”  
  
Their faces are separated by no more than a couple of inches, but O’Reily’s stare is unwavering, his breath a light flutter against his face. Beecher searches his eyes for something, anything—a tell, an emotion, something to grab onto and interpret, something that could provide a gut feeling to run with here. All he comes up with is this: _Who else in this place could be this close to me and not make me want to scream?_  
  
He leans close enough to snort the powder off his hand and then lies back down, his face still warmed by O’Reily’s breath. Slowly, one blood vessel, one nerve at a time, the rest of him warms, too.  
  
“That’s it,” O’Reily whispers.  
  
 _Oh, holy SHIT._  
  
Beecher hasn’t felt this good in _ages._ Maybe not in his fucking _life._ He feels invincible, like he could take on the entire Aryan Brotherhood at once and beat every one of them to a bloody pulp with one hand tied behind his back. This new Beecher—he’s a fucking _badass._ No wonder O’Reily wants him by his side.  
  
“How you feeling, bro?” O’Reily’s hand has now moved to Beecher’s shoulder, fingers slowly massaging.  
  
Beecher’s whole _body_ smiles in response. “Fucking great. Jesus.”  
  
A firm squeeze on his shoulder. “I’d been saving this shit for a special occasion.” O’Reily’s eyes are quick and sharp and _clearly_ not high—but still so close, so close to him.  
  
“So what do you say, Beecher? Be my brother?”  
  
“Brother...” Beecher tries to imagine Golden Boy Angus next to him on the bed, offering him coke, and starts to giggle. “You’re nothing like my brother.”  
  
O’Reily smiles like he thinks it’s funny, too. “I know. But in Oz you take what you can get, right?”  
  
Beecher has to take a moment to _marvel_ at the truth of that statement. As he lies there and lets his mind take off at a wild sprint with it, the reason for O’Reily wanting him around, wanting to be around _him,_ becomes so obvious that he can’t believe it hadn’t ever occurred to him before. Every molecule in the universe starts to fall into place, one after the other, each with a satisfying _click,_ and Beecher’s on top of it all. He _gets_ it. _Beecher and O’Reily._ Said notwithstanding, are there any two more intelligent people in the whole of Oz, staff included? What are a bunch of inbred, ignorant crackers compared with the two of them? It just _fits._ He remembers all those times he had to escape, when he felt he’d die if he couldn’t crawl out from under the clammy, stifling weight of Schillinger’s constant attention—remembers who was there waiting for him, waiting to throw an arm around his shoulder and offer him whatever he had to make him forget the pain for a while. Now he understands why. O’Reily had known this day was coming, when Beecher would no longer be content to play the hapless victim. And now... The two of them together—what the fuck _can’t_ they do?  
  
He opens his mouth to tell him this, to tell him everything -- that yeah, he’ll be his brother, he’s been his brother all _along_ —but O’Reily’s eyes have wandered away from his and moved down, down his body, down to...  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
“Go ahead and do what you need to, man. No one’s gonna see.”  
  
No matter which way Beecher shifts on the bed, the fact that he’s hard is ridiculously obvious—a monstrous, traitorous bulge in his pants.   
  
“It’s the coke,” Beecher whispers, his face burning. “This just...happens sometimes.”  
  
“I hear ya. Hey, I’ve been there.” O’Reily’s hand is closing around Beecher’s wrist, moving toward the ache between his legs.  
  
“Fuck,” Beecher groans. “I can’t...” But the instant his hand touches his erection, he starts rubbing helplessly. O’Reily, again, is completely unfazed. As always.  
  
“It’s okay...”  
  
“Just...don’t move... This won’t take long.”  
  
O’Reily doesn’t move—not away, at least. But Beecher thinks he might have moved a little closer, because he can feel the warmth of his breath, the rhythm of his breathing, faster, hotter, heavier now, against his face. Except for it being coke instead of H humming in his veins, all of it, all of this, is so familiar—the smell of him, his comfortable, comforting heat, the proximity without any menace attached to it. O’Reily won’t touch him; he’ll just _be there,_ watching, getting out of it...whatever it is he gets out of it.  
  
And yeah, it really doesn’t take long at all. Beecher’s arm feels like it contains enough unspent energy to bring him off ten times over, and his cock’s sending urgent messages on all frequencies to let him know it might actually be up to that challenge. He twists the sheets on O’Reily’s unmade bed in one sweaty fist and pumps his hips to meet his hand, closes his eyes and tries to focus on nothing but the friction against his erection, and then rifles though his mind for something—anything—that might speed things along. First Miss Sally, then Diane Whittlesey, then—God forgive him— _Sister Pete_...but what finally _finishes_ him is a catch in O’Reily’s breathing, a soft sound that Beecher knows wasn’t only in his imagination, one that tells him he isn’t doing this alone—that his own hand might be the only one touching him, but he isn’t _alone._ When Beecher’s hips snap with the sudden force of his orgasm, he isn’t trying to forget that O’Reily is lying next to him, shielding him from the rest of Em City. Not anymore.  
  
It takes Beecher maybe a minute of trying to catch his breath before he finally realizes it isn’t going to be caught. His nervous energy seems virtually undepleted, and there’s O’Reily, still lying next to him and apparently not going anywhere.  
  
“Feeling better?”  
  
Beecher laughs; he can’t even think of how to answer him except to laugh. _Better._ He doesn’t know if that’s exactly the right word for it, but in Oz you take what you can get, right? He feels raw, new, like a full layer of bullshit has been sloughed away and he can breathe again. The wild tangle of thoughts that had accumulated in his head during his time in the Hole has been unraveled into manageable threads now, and confusion has given way to excitement. Something’s going to happen out there, and he’s going to be _in_ it. No longer a target himself, he’s going to make a target of his enemies. He’s going to make a target of Schillinger. And he has help, he thinks, as he takes one more look at the eyes that are still staring straight into his. He has help if he needs it.  
  
He rolls off the bed, pulls some marginally clean clothes from the bottom of his laundry bag, and begins to change.  
  
“You’re with me, Beecher.” This time, O’Reily says it like a statement of fact.  
  
Something inside Beecher’s chest sparks and swells at the fact that it still seems so important to him. _Crazy or not._ He nods. He doesn’t _need_ to be sane to pound the living hell out of anyone dumb enough to get in their way. Turning to look outside the pod, he sees two guys playing checkers and wonders.  
  
 _What the hell is everyone waiting for?_


End file.
